


Falling in my Dreams- Falling for You

by MarvelouslyMadMM



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Awesome Pepper Potts, Dear readers- go write Pepper/Rhodey friendship fics plz, Dreams, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, Jesus how is that not a tag, M/M, Men Crying, POV James "Rhodey" Rhodes, Past Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Pepper Potts & James "Rhodey" Rhodes Friendship, Pepper Potts & Tony Stark Friendship, Pepper Potts Is a Good Bro, Soul Bond, soul mates, that needs to be a tag, why is that not a tag???
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-13
Updated: 2018-03-20
Packaged: 2019-03-30 21:39:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13960563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarvelouslyMadMM/pseuds/MarvelouslyMadMM
Summary: Rhodey has dreamed of flying his entire life.He has dreamed just as long, of falling.He has dreamed since puberty of a man with whiskey eyes and a ridiculous beard.He meets a gawky kid with the same eyes, but who is nothing like the man of his dreams otherwise. Somehow he falls in love with this kid, but knows nothing can come of it.He can't be together with his dream man- and he can't be together with Tony either.





	1. Meeting your Dream Man

James dreamed of falling his entire life. 

He dreamed of robots that flew like men and the blue glow of white hot fire and the red flash of light. He dreamed of the sky spinning through a helmet view, mixing sky and land as he tumbled. 

He dreamed, and he remembered hitting the ground far too fast. He would wake up shivering, remembering the way he had hit the ground, how somehow in the dream he had been less afraid than worried. 

He had other dreams, happier dreams of whimsical things, and dreams that should have terrified him but didn’t, dreams of a red and gold robot, reaching for him. He had dreams of that same robot, hand up, and blue fire glowing in his palm as it faced him. Those dreams- they made him angry and sad and sometimes both, but not scared. 

He got older, started to enter puberty and he began to dream about a man inside the suit. A man with eyes like the whiskey his uncle drank, of a laugh that made him want to laugh too. He saw him nearly every night. The man haggard or bright, and he seemed to get younger, the older James became. 

He cried over his dreams for the first time when the man, now looking almost as young as James with that beard seeming to just be filling out, called to him “Long time no see, Honey-bear” in the dream. He half shoved his pillow into he mouth and pressed as hard as he could at his eyes, a grief so overwhelming he couldn’t understand it, it made no sense. But it also did. 

James knew he was going to be Air Force, had been ROTC for three years now. He was going to MIT in the fall, and his dreams- he couldn’t be gay, not and fly. It would save him so much grief, the sky and earth spinning in his vision, the feel of hitting the ground one of his earliest memories of a dream, and the one that always returned. He knew in his bones, that he would fly, just as he knew even deeper- that someday, he would fall. 

He hoped, deep in his bones, to never meet the man of his dreams, even while every day he looked for the man. He came to MIT, and studied hard, he worked harder than he ever had in his life for those three years, too exhausted to dream anymore. He stayed on the Dean’s List, and worked his ass off, 19 and a year shy of his BS, he was on track and had no sign of his dream man. 

There was a kid, though, that kept grabbing his eye. He was an asshole, too smart and spoiled to the bone. All gawky legs and too large teeth and a shock of soft brown hair that looked like something Einstein would have had. His eyes though, damn him, were whiskey brown, beautiful even as his mouth shot off bullshit in that nasty squeak of puberty. James would hate Anthony goddamn Stark, except.

Except James couldn’t help watching the kid. Was always aware of the kid. And the kid, was so alone. Was sad whenever no one was looking at him. Was all but screaming for anyone to see him, to pay attention to him. And tearing himself apart doing it. All the drugs, all the parties, the obnoxiousness- the kid couldn’t be older than 15. And everyone else was using him already. It made James mad, and he started snarking about it. They shared a lab, and what began as James trying to point out that what Anthony was doing was counter-productive, became an epic snark fest. 

It became a bit of a prank war and feud, but neither of them really intended harm, somehow they came to a place of friendly rivalry, and Anthony became Tony... and James became Pookie became, as Tony and he shared high fives over getting a shaky bit of programing ironed out, Rhodey. 

Rhodey and Tony, became fast friends, more like brothers if they were honest. And Tony burned himself pursuing his father’s attention, but he smiled more, growing up a bit more each day, but he was Tony. Gawky, nerdy, sweet and incredibly frustrating Tony. Rhodey couldn’t really see him as anything but Tony. 

Rhodey was 21, and was wrapping up his Masters, when Tony’s world shattered apart. The funeral was awful, and the feel of Tony shaking apart, sobbing in his arms, made his heart break with it. He loved this little shit- he wasn’t his dream man, but he loved him so much. 

When Tony tried to kiss him after the tears, James was nearly too weak to say no- he did though. He gently but firmly tugged Tony’s head down to kiss his forehead and told him just as firmly but gently “Tony, I will hold you in my arms, I will be here for you, but I cannot be that for you.” And in the morning Obie came and gathered Tony up to go start the day before either Rhodey or Tony could really say anything besides Tony's plea "Come with me?" and Rhodey, thinking about the man of his dreams and how he had been wearing a military outfit in the dream, shook his head as an answer, too afraid to open his mouth lest he say or do something stupid. Like he loved Tony but couldn't. 

Rhodey didn’t get a chance to see Tony again after that, he had to finish his Masters, then there was the Academy, then there was ever more training. Then, he was assigned to join a liaison team. A liaison team for, of all places, Stark Industries. Rhodey was unsure how everything would shake out, what would they say, after so long apart. 

Rhodey’s breath stopped and his heart shattered, when he finally saw Tony again. He knew why now, why that dream made him cry for so long into his pillows. Because Tony’s eyes were filled with a resigned lost want, and so much sadness, but his smile was all easy tease as he cheerfully sassed “Long time no see, Honey-bear” while offering Rhodey his hand. 

Rhodey, with the eyes of the military all around him, smiled back, and managed to force his voice smooth as he shook that hand, like he didn’t want to pull him into a hug, didn’t remember how right he had felt in his arms. “It’s good to see you, Tony.” 

He had already cried himself out about this moment, so it made blinking away the emotion now much easier to do. He was just only slightly wrong on why he was crying. Because he had broken both of their hearts, and now he had no choice, but to keep on the path of his dreams. On the path to falling. He could see how it could have been different if he had said yes- if he had gone with Tony. If.


	2. Rhodey Hijacked this

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Somehow this went from 2 parts to 4. WARNING Dark ideas about soul mates and trauma are discussed. Ideas of suicide between soulmates are discussed. 
> 
> Ideas of what it means to love someone self destructing, and what it means to internalize that, to hate yourself because the person you love hates themself, and you can blame yourself for it. 
> 
> Healthy coping tries to peek it's head out amongst all the very unhealthy coping and while Rhodey sets boundaries this fic decided it wanted more angst so he does it badly. 
> 
> Please self care, my dear readers, and be aware this got bumpy.

Rhodey spent his 28th birthday in Vegas, drinking to not think about how much he wanted to kiss Tony. About how the drunken kiss he had given Rhodey on Tony’s own birthday earlier that year hadn’t made him want anything more than to punch Tony at the same time it made him want to cry. Want to kiss him and take it back, go back in time and go with Tony. Go back and say yes. Go back and keep Tony from smashing apart into alcohol and booze and a different body every damn night. For almost a year, back in college, Tony had been sober and solid and his. Neither one of them had ever said anything about it, he hadn’t even really seen it that way, but it made it no less true. 

Rhodey drank to forget how much he wanted to punch himself and then yell at Tony to stop doing this because he couldn’t fix this. He couldn’t undo this and watching Tony self destruct was killing him, even as he couldn’t turn away. Couldn’t avert his gaze. His heart wouldn’t let him. His path, this job, wouldn’t let him.

Tony Stark was everything he should hate, should loathe, but he was still his Tones. Still the boy-man that had laughed so hard he snorted a ramen noodle out his nose while they both had been up for nearly three days coding only to high five him and do that weird waddling dance in place while crowing when the newly compiled learning program in the robot picked up the right tool. Even if he was gone, Rhodey would never have forgotten the Tones-bones he loved in that lab. Not now that he had realized it was always love. Now that he couldn’t deny it to himself. That Tones was there in Tony, deep down in Tony sometimes, but not gone.

The man he loved was always there in the flashes of soul lifting kindness, the nerdy jokes, the way even when he was being a massive unimaginably white sexist asshole- he also wasn’t. Tony could swagger over to a dozen ladies in the course of a night, but he always made sure that they were aware of the situation- they would get a fun night and a story, nothing more, nothing less, but only if they wanted to say yes. He ensured consent for everyone but himself, never taking a girl home that hadn’t said yes before she started drinking. Never letting himself pressure a girl with the idea that she could be fired if she said no. He was an asshole, but it was always a mutual thing. Tony went for girls that were obvious about using him. He treated it more like a transaction than many of his actual transactions. 

It made Rhodey want to scream, and he was never sure if it was at the most recent reporter or model or starlet, or at Tony. If it was at the people Tony was using to forget his pain, to have touch, to fill the void that Rhodey knew was shaped like his arms around Tony, that he wanted to yell at, or if it was Tony for not doing something, anything else. At how Tony wasn’t just throwing himself into coding or work or anything but a thousand and one warm bodies and twice as many chemicals. Only in the bottom of the bottle of whiskey, always whiskey when he was thinking of Tony, could he admit that the person he wanted to yell at the most was himself. He could stop this still. It would be so hard, to gather the pieces of Tony and Tones and his Tones-bones, and help him piece them all back together. 

Rhodey just didn’t think he should have to.  
He didn’t think he could.  
He was so angry that he had to be the one to try to nanny Tony, had to be a minder for him, when all he wanted was to have him step into his arms again, to undo time and tell him he loved him, back when it was so much more uncomplicated. Back before Tony was all barriers and defenses and jagged sharp edges. Back before he knew his soul mate would now never be truly his. 

Rhodey ends the night with a pair of strippers giggling in the corner, high on the drugs Tony shared with them. He ends the night wrestling Tony into bed and wrestling with himself, because Tony, drunk and high and without any inhibition looks at him with tears in his eyes and asks “Why couldn’t you have come with me, Rhodey?” his voice not the sarcastic sharp man he is, but the impossibly young soul that Rhodey now forever felt shaking apart in his arms in his dreams. 

 

That memory had replaced Falling as his number one dream. A memory he revisited so many times he wondered sometimes if it was ever real. Rhodey looked at Tony, who looked so small despite being a grown man, and his alcohol loosened tongue felt thick as it betrayed him. “Because all I could think about then was if I said yes- I would never fly like I did in my dreams. Would never meet the man I know is my soul mate. Never see how he smiles when he flies with me. I know you think religion and belief is stupid, but I have always believed in him, Tony. From my earliest dreams, I dreamed of flying with him. I loved you, but I couldn’t go with you knowing that was looming over us. I am so sorry I -” Tony began sobbing, curled up into a fetal ball of chemical laced emotion, so small and so tiny in the huge bed. Rhodey curled around him, he couldn’t not. His words choked off before he blew it all- complicated it all. Tore it open to destroy them. To finish telling Tony and save them. He held him instead of talking and added new tears to his dreams. He added the feel of breaking both of their hearts in a new way to the dreams of tomorrow. 

Rhodey kissed Tony’s hair and temple and held him till sleep finally came for them both. In the morning, Tony didn’t let him speak, didn’t let him rehash what had happened. He opened with “Honey-bear, what would your commanders think, you sharing a bed with lil ol me? Better not let them know that. Good thing the girls stayed the night too. Plausible deniability and all.” With his sunglasses on and a smile so fake it may as well have been a blade in Rhodey’s ribs. His tongue, which had been so loose yesterday in all the worst ways, was glue in his mouth now. That smile had stolen any words that could possibly have come.

Time passed, a blur of years while Tony fell ever further and further apart, every day he burned more of himself and the world around him charred and singed. Weapons so potent they stole the breath from him, were tossed his way instead of the latest Star Trek meme. Tones became buried, to the point where in his dreams he began to feel the memory of Tony in his arms sobbing, his beard rubbing on his own chest while tears dripped over his collarbones, was a funeral as much as anything else. It became less about minding Tony and more about keeping him from full self destruction. The care of before became less and less, Tony sliding farther and farther into the bottle, and into bedding his way through his own grief. 

Rhodey was turning 40 when the dream of fire in Afghanistan stole his breath for the first time. The plume of smoke and the carnage of dead bodies, clawed at him. His heart was in his throat and somehow he knew. He knew he would lose Tony if he went to Afghanistan. He knew he would be taken from him. He dreamed of checking the bodies, all dead, but looking ever onward for any clue, any scrap of Tony. Finding the scraps of black suit, finding blood, but no body. 

The dream was followed, in short order, by the dream of Finding, as it became known to him. Tony was beaten up, battered and dehydrated. He was sunburnt and that glowing blue light winked out of his tanktop when he collapsed to his knees in Rhodey’s view. It was terrible. How wrecked Tony looked. How all the soft fatty flesh that always lingered on Tony’s belly had been melted away from him till only muscle remained. How Rhodey dreamed of Finding enough to know the way those Whiskey eyes, so full of grief and shadows, had tears lingering exhausted and unable to fall due to dehydration more than masculine pride. How Tony’s lips were cracked and bleeding even as he stared at Rhodey like a second coming. Stared at him so grateful it choked Rhodey. 

He never wanted to see Tony look like that. 

Tony had to look like that. The blue light in his chest was his first memory. 

Tony falls farther and farther apart, while Rhodey wrestles with these horrible conflicting ideas. The awards ceremony is more about work than anything, but there is talk about active missile tests in Afghanistan. Rhodey feels it eat at him inside. He plans to talk with Tony, to make Tony promise not to go. Tony doesn’t show for the Award, doesn’t barely look up from where he is playing craps when Rhodey finds him and for a grim, horrible second Rhodey wants to tell him to go to Afghanistan. Wants to make him grow up, damn it. 

The bile burning at the back of his throat at that idea chokes him. Just because he dreamed the finding, doesn’t make it certain. He could lose Tony. Forever. For good. Not just lose the Tones that was his best friend and the love of his life, but Tony who still is his closest friend despite it all. Who still knows him nearly as well as he knows Tony. Tony reads it as anger, and like he always does when confronted with any sort of censure, he becomes more of an asshole. His asshole persona is a defense. Rhodey knows that. It makes it no easier to swallow. 

Rhodey tries as hard as he can to talk Tony out of the trip. He even begs. Tony however, pushes when he senses weakness. He shoves and pulls and Rhodey stands on an airstrip nearly ready to cry with all the conflicting feelings he has. Tony is nearly three hours late. Maybe just maybe this can be averted. His superiors will be livid, but Tony will be safe. Rhodey waffles on annoyed or grateful, however the sound of Tony driving wild and reckless to the plane decides which emotion he should be feeling. 

Rhodey wants to tell Tony to get in his car and drive away. Instead he desperately tries to talk Tony into taking this seriously. Into taking his own safety seriously. The more he argues, however, the more mullish Tony becomes. Rhodey has a moment where his nose burns and his eyes water as he tilts his head back. “Tones, I lo-“ He starts, only for Tony to start clapping, the air hostess now stripping on the pole. 

Rhodey swallows and resigns himself to trying to save Tony. Part of him knows he can’t. Part of him hates the part that begins to accept it. He drinks and wonders how souls could be this messed up, two halves of a sundered whole. Two beings so in tune with each other and so wrapped up in one another that they vibrate through time and dreams, echoing. 

When Tony presses a drink into his hand he drinks it. He asks then, the burning question he has never gotten an answer to. “Do you ever dream, Tony?” He knows the pat answer, the one that has met him the last three times he asked this. 

Tony looks at him, for a second his eyes are haunted and shadowed, distant and hollow. “I leave that to you, Honey-bear.” They split the bottle between them, and part of Rhodey wonders if Tony does dream. 

Does he dream of Rhodey falling?

The Convoy is as bad as his dream, worse. The Fun-vee is surrounded by the stink of bodies releasing waste, of blood and ash and melting plastic. The acrid tang of smoke mixing with the bile at the back of his throat, now fully realized but with the added pulse of his own hangover. Tony Stark is missing. The Finding becomes his only comfort. He argues against Tony being declared dead. He argues for continued sweeps. He argues and calls in favors he never knew why he was always hoarding them till he completely understands why he never cashed them in before. 

Part of Rhodey has known since he met Tony as a liaison instead of as a friendly rival, that someday Tony would need his help. The robotic suit is not a toy, it is a weapon. He knows that. 

The greatest weapon-smith to ever live will craft a weapon the world has never seen the like of. It terrifies the part of Rhodey that sounds like his mother, the part of him that knows how hard their lives will be, inside those suits. The part of him that is still scared of the way that fall ends.

Afghanistan is the forge. But if Rhodey is not there to pick him up when Tony falls- he will die in that forge, melt apart to pebbled beads of molten metal dotted amongst the embers. Rhodey runs out of favors before Tony is found, and Pepper, Tony’s PA and new Nanny, the woman that took over the role of tending Tony when Rhodey could not do it anymore, who looked at him with keen eyes, kind for all they seem to see through them both, asks him why he refuses to let Tony go. She stares at him over Skype and asks again, why she is going to authorize this in Tony’s name, when everyone else has given up hope. Why she is going to do something they both know is barely legal, to give him a few more weeks of searching.

Rhodey is a proud man, but her eyes say she already knows. Her lips in that thin line shout louder than a hundred of her calm words, that he has to say it. To tell her the truth he holds against his heart like a shield. Like a dagger. “Pepper,” His voice breaks, before he firms it up. He swallows hard and stares at the screen, knowing that if Tony dies none of this matters anymore, because while he loves flying and loves being who he is in the military, Tony is and has always been the person his heart beats for. The hope that thrums through him. “Pepper, I have dreamed of Tony since before I knew what dreams could mean. I have dreamed of him flying with me since before I hit puberty. I have dreamed of finding him, cracked and bleeding in the desert, his lips blistered and his skin burnt; for years now. I tried to keep him away from this- and now I can not fail him. Pepper, he will come back, but I need to be in the air when he starts to fight his way out, I need to be there when he staggers over that dune. If I am not there to catch him-“ He chokes and he finishes saying it despite how strangled the words sound “Then I will lose my soul mate. He’s in there and someday, he will fly with me.” 

Pepper looks at him and then says softly “You know what they say dreams mean, then. You know that the end of the dreams is when the soul mates are in tune, when the bond is realized. And before they are finished,” She is speaking so softly but Rhodey doesn’t want to hear it. Can’t. “Pepper, I can’t be what Tony needs before then. And he can’t be what I need before then. I wish we could be, but I missed that chance. Missed it time and again. Don’t make me miss this chance. Please?” He stares at her and whispers, “I know you love him too. Even when he makes you want to strangle him.” 

Pepper’s smile is watery as she nods. “Yeah, even when I want to throttle him, that damn boyish charm kicks in and gives me some piece of wonder. Something that makes the last week worth it.” She shakes her head then, short and sharp, straightening her features. “I don’t dream about him, and I don’t envy you the road ahead. Will you tell him before the dreams end?” She asks, looking at him with those green eyes, laying him open. 

“Pepper, I think he already knows. He never tells me what he dreams. But he has always fought sleeping. From long before I met him.” Rhodey says, and when Skype closes, there is already new emails about the next day’s search. Rhodey knows what dreams mean. He knows what the end of them mean for most people. 

It means the bond has settled into place, that the dreams end when two souls, two lives, move in perfect sync. But Rhodey has known what the feel of his spine shattering was his whole life. It’s hard to imagine a romance of the ages when one person in the bond is a corpse or a paraplegic. He doesn’t look too closely at himself, at why he has pursued this his entire life, knowing that if he does he will fall. Knowing that if he does, he will likely die. Tony had, in a drunken rant, gone over the few accepted scientific studies done on the dream mate and soul mate thing. About how while the two soul-mates may be in tune, may have an awareness of where the other is and a vague notion of how they feel at any given moment, it is no guarantee of happiness. In fact the number of joint suicide rates among those reported as soul mates was staggeringly high. Even as society began to nominally accept that soul mates were possibly real, and that the idea should not be limited to procreation capable couples, there was a backlash. 

Because those with the strongest bonds, were also almost always steeped in trauma. There were theories bandied about, that soul mates were only able to, somehow sense the future or send the dreams to their past selves, because of all the trauma that they went through in those dreams. A child telling their parents about repeating dreams, was often met not with celebration, but with fear and denial. Or worse. 

And in the last two decades, the numbers of children dreaming repeating dreams of specific people or incidents had skyrocketed. Throughout the world dreaming of soulmates was growing exponentially, and in the US it was particularly pronounced in New York, and other large cities. 

Rhodey knew the studies, and they were not a comfort. They were not, however as disturbing as Tony thought they would be to him. Rhodey knew that being soul mates with Tony was not going to be easy. He knew without a doubt, that their bond, if it ever came, would be something incredible. He knew trauma and horror and grief were twined in their story, in their dreams and thus in the base of their bond. It was part of why he could not be what Tony wanted now. He could not burn himself on the flames of Tony yet. He had to save that burning, that final swan song, for the end. For if anything came after the fall. 

For when Tony and him were in perfect synch, jagged edges a perfect match for one another. 

Rhodey laid down in a cot in Afganistan, and opened his eyes in the middle of the night somewhere overlooking a bunch of burning buildings. Tony landed with Pepper, obviously unaware Rhodey was there. He ranted about doing okay, while explosions flared light across them both. Rhodey looked to his grey gauntlet covered hands and then back to the two, where Tony and Pepper were now kissing. Were deciding to make a go of it. Rhodey dreamed of the two together, a Christmas tree behind them as Tony laid across a couch, his head in Pepper's lap as she massaged his temples and bent down to kiss Tony's lips. Little scenes that hurt him even as something like hope burned as fierce as the jealousy in the dream.

Rhodey woke, with fresh tears in his eyes but a steady determination to bring Tony home. To see that smile on his face. Even if it wouldn’t be Rhodey to put it there. The jealousy and sadness was less than the hope that look brought back to him. His Tones was there. Would come back. No matter how dark it got, he knew now that Tony would make it. Would come back to begin healing. Maybe it wouldn’t be jagged edges, just maybe it would be something beautiful. 

When he held Tony later that day, he had already cried himself out. He could be everything Tony needed him to be right now. He could hold him and take him to where Pepper would step in. He could let him go. He would heal. They both would.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter- Rhodey and Tony do that horrible IM2 Birthday Bash. Pepper and Rhodey commiserate. Fast forward to the Accords and Rhodey having come to terms with the various traumas of being Tony's soul mate. He, to steal a line from strangelove, has learned to love the bomb once more. 
> 
> When he falls in the suit he really has come to this place of acceptance and fear not for himself but for Tony. Because at the point he has reached by then, he sees this as the next step and not something to be fought. Fighting will come after the fall, when he knows he will have to survive being paralyzed if he survives at all. 
> 
> But he will be with Tony. And he truly believes Tony can finally actually meet him half way. Can take care of him, and love him back, as a man, and not just as that boy he always will be deep inside. 
> 
> PS: Slightly related note- Anyone want to Beta/cheerlead for me? T'Challa is kicking my ass and this was banged out in 4 hours of frustration after it refused to leave me alone so I could work on my 2 commissions or the T'Challa chapter.

**Author's Note:**

> Whoops- I was writing ABO and thinking about dreams and the ancestral plane and then this happened... Next up is After he has fallen, after Tony is there so close to him and he is no longer able to be in the airforce. After, where he can write his own story again. Take a chance.


End file.
